It started innocently. I walked my dog on a shingle beach in Kent and saw an empty dinghy used by migrants to cross over from France. I took a picture and posted it on Twitter, saying: “I can only imagine the degree of fear and despair which leads people to risk crossing the Channel on this in December. And I cannot begin to imagine the lack of empathy required to be Suella Braverman.”
Ms Braverman is the British Home Secretary who miraculously survived her various political mistakes – and whose “solution” to undocumented asylum seekers landing on British beaches was to continue the plan prepared by Priti Patel, her predecessor, to give a reported £120 million ($147 million) to Rwanda to accept them by the planeload. Her policy has failed. It’s unclear whether it can ever succeed.
Britain’s Border Force, meanwhile, does a difficult job. When it finds a dinghy, the migrants are rescued, the motor stripped out and the dinghy is either towed to shore or cut free to wash up on a beach. Children on dinghies in December sometimes suffer from hypothermia. They can be very ill. But what was most interesting to me was the reaction on Twitter to my fairly anodyne comments and the picture I posted.
If Brits go abroad, it’s aspirational. But when the most desperate people in the world try to settle in Britain, some of my fellow citizens lose their minds
Most Tweets were sympathetic. Some were extremely hostile, mostly from anonymous Twitter users, those whose courage stops at actually identifying themselves. In one creepy tweet, the author claimed he had seen me “with my children” near a Tube station in a “trendy” area of “north London”. (And no, I have no idea what kind of weird person would find such information relevant, even if true.) Another claimed she was “terrified” by asylum seekers held in Kent. They are held temporarily on a largely disused airfield in what is a bit like a makeshift prison. But that “terrified” person’s Twitter bio also announced that she was anti-vaccination and thought global warming was a hoax, so her threshold for being terrified seemed a little odd to me.
Other hostile responses were from people who self-identified as “libertarians” or “anti-woke” or “Conservatives”. Some pointed out that the migrants “are in France. We try to go there for our holidays. It’s nice". France is indeed “nice” for those of us with passports and holiday money. For undocumented English-speaking refugees fleeing Taliban persecution in Afghanistan, where many Afghans worked for British military forces in the past 20 years, France is not always the place of their dreams.
Either way, what struck me about the hostile tweets wasn’t just the sad abuse, lack of empathy or bad grammar and spelling. It was the ignorance about the real issues involved – and that ignorance goes all the way to Ms Braverman herself.
Last week, she was stumped by a fellow Conservative MP who asked a simple question: what are the safe and legal routes for asylum seekers from (say) Africa, trying to enter Britain? In one of the most embarrassing televised clips involving a senior British politician I can ever remember, Ms Braverman was absolutely clueless – perhaps because she knows that there are no safe and legal routes generally available, hence the desperation from migrants.
Successive British governments have promised a “hostile environment” to those coming to the UK without proper paperwork. This threat has failed, too. A record 44,000 have arrived so far this year. Total net migration to the UK in the past year is about half a million. Successive Conservative governments have stoked up fear and anger about migrants without confronting the real issues – Brexit, as usual, being one. If the UK were still in the EU, France would be expected to take back some, if not all, of those who arrive in Kent on inflatable dinghies from the French coast.
Many of the Twitter complainers – according to their own Twitter feeds – voted for Brexit, the same policy that causes significant parts of the immigration problem they hate most. Meanwhile, according to the UK-based think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, from May 2020 “more than 5.5 million people from Britain live overseas and leave the country at a rate of around 2,000 a week".
British emigres do not sail to the EU or the Gulf or the US on home-made dinghies. The British abroad tend to call themselves “expats”, not migrants. But the sorry saga of the dinghy on the Kent beach reveals the bizarre attitude of some British people to migration. If Brits go abroad, it’s aspirational. We go for a better life. I lived in the US for almost a decade for that reason, and I felt welcome. But when some of the most desperate people in the world try to settle in Britain for the same reason – a better life – some of my fellow citizens lose their minds in fury.
From the British cabinet to a few Twitter nasties, we could solve immigration difficulties by honestly confronting the problem rather than stoking fear and making up fantasy solutions about planeloads of desperate people going to Rwanda.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
MATCH INFO
Wales 1 (Bale 45 3')
Croatia 1 (Vlasic 09')
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
more from Janine di Giovanni
West Indies v India - Third ODI
India 251-4 (50 overs)
Dhoni (78*), Rahane (72), Jadhav (40)
Cummins (2-56), Bishoo (1-38)
West Indies 158 (38.1 overs)
Mohammed (40), Powell (30), Hope (24)
Ashwin (3-28), Yadav (3-41), Pandya (2-32)
India won by 93 runs
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Adil%20El%20Arbi%20and%20Bilall%20Fallah%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EWill%20Smith%2C%20Martin%20Lawrence%2C%20Joe%20Pantoliano%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Notable cricketers and political careers
- India: Kirti Azad, Navjot Sidhu and Gautam Gambhir (rumoured)
- Pakistan: Imran Khan and Shahid Afridi (rumoured)
- Sri Lanka: Arjuna Ranatunga, Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan (rumoured)
- Bangladesh (Mashrafe Mortaza)
The specs
Engine: 4-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: nine-speed
Power: 542bhp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: Dh848,000
On sale: now
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
If you go...
Fly from Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Chiang Mai in Thailand, via Bangkok, before taking a five-hour bus ride across the Laos border to Huay Xai. The land border crossing at Huay Xai is a well-trodden route, meaning entry is swift, though travellers should be aware of visa requirements for both countries.
Flights from Dubai start at Dh4,000 return with Emirates, while Etihad flights from Abu Dhabi start at Dh2,000. Local buses can be booked in Chiang Mai from around Dh50
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
THE BIO
Bio Box
Role Model: Sheikh Zayed, God bless his soul
Favorite book: Zayed Biography of the leader
Favorite quote: To be or not to be, that is the question, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Favorite food: seafood
Favorite place to travel: Lebanon
Favorite movie: Braveheart
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shantanu Maheshwari, Jimmy Shergill, Saiee Manjrekar
Director: Neeraj Pandey
Rating: 2.5/5
Tips for job-seekers
- Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
- Make sure you are an exact fit for the job advertised. If you are an HR manager with five years’ experience in retail and the job requires a similar candidate with five years’ experience in consumer, you should apply. But if you have no experience in HR, do not apply for the job.
David Mackenzie, founder of recruitment agency Mackenzie Jones Middle East
Results
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The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
SCORES IN BRIEF
New Zealand 153 and 56 for 1 in 22.4 overs at close
Pakistan 227
(Babar 62, Asad 43, Boult 4-54, De Grandhomme 2-30, Patel 2-64)
More coverage from the Future Forum
FROM%20THE%20ASHES
%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Khalid%20Fahad%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EStarring%3A%20Shaima%20Al%20Tayeb%2C%20Wafa%20Muhamad%2C%20Hamss%20Bandar%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ERating%3A%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women & the Food That Tells Their Stories
Laura Shapiro
Fourth Estate
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreator%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENetflix%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EKris%20Fade%2C%20Ebraheem%20Al%20Samadi%2C%20Zeina%20Khoury%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
